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Broadway's 'Once' Remains Magical in Final Two Months
I had heard that the Broadway musical Once set in Dublin and about love in a pub had posted its closing date for early January, 2015, but I was still surprised to see a Wednesday matinee performance...
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Hello Kitty Con Opening Night: Erik Estrada! Ireland Baldwin! Ophelia Overdose!
(Ireland Baldwin and Amy Doan. All images courtesy of Susan Michals) Last night in Los Angeles, Hello Kitty got her Hollywood close-up with the first ever Hello Kitty Con convention in the world. The...
View ArticleAbout Susan Sollins
Susan Sollins died on October 13 and changed the lives of all who knew her. It was such a sudden loss -- startling, saddening, totally unexpected. Susan was a person who planned and scheduled, who...
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The Political Schtick: Theater Review
In New York last week, I made it a point (no pun intended!) to see "Tail! Spin!", a hilarious political satire on our wayward politicians and their penises. You'll remember Anthony Wiener's...
View ArticleFirst Nighter: Stoppard's 'Real Thing,' McNally's 'Lips Together, Teeth Apart'
When Gwyneth Paltrow and Chris Martin announced they were consciously uncoupling, you can bet that not a single playwright saw the situation as raw material for a new work. No, sir. No, ma'am. On the...
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What Fresh Hell Is This?
This has not been a good year for the peace process (whether one considers Vladimir Putin's aggressive actions against the Ukraine or the most recent flareup of tensions between Israel and Palestine)....
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Dido and Aeneas, Bluebeard's Castle in a Duo at LA Opera
Two probing views of obsessive love spelled success for the marriage of inconvenience between Purcell's Dido and Aeneas and Bartók's Bluebeard's Castle. Their double-bill opening Saturday at the...
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Celebrity Photographer Blake Little Is Hollywood's Not-So-Secret Weapon
One thing you eventually learn about world-renowned celebrity photographer Blake Little is this: Whether you're perusing his latest stunning image of one of the planet's most famous superstars or...
View ArticleFarewell to Little Pete's
A wrecking ball is set to fly through Little Pete's. Progress commands that a 300-room hotel must take the place of the parking ramp at 219 South 17th Street in whose corner nestles one of Center City...
View Article"The Real Thing": Stoppard's Love Play With McGregor and Gyllenhaal
The course of true love never did run smooth, as one of Tom Stoppard's favorite writers once observed, but for the star-crossed adulterers in The Real Thing, his smart and funny play which opened last...
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These May Be the Greatest Halloween Portraits of All Time
Canadian born photographer Joey L. has been shooting eye-catching portraits, campaigns and billboards of some of the most recognizable people of our time -- from Anne Hathaway to Jennifer Lawrence....
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Today's Princesses and Witches Are Taking Bitchy Back
"What's more offensive, a little girl saying f*ck or the f*ing sexist way society treats girls and women?" ask a 6-year-old in a pink taffeta princess dress and tiara in a new video making the rounds...
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Crossing Brooklyn: Art From Bushwick, Bed-Stuy, and Beyond
On October 1, I had the opportunity to preview Crossing Brooklyn: Art From Bushwick, Bed-Stuy, and Beyond, with a press walk-through led by the curators, Eugenie Tsai and Rujeko Hockley. In addition,...
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Aye Carumba! Ole, Ole! The Dances That Are Connecting People Throughout L.A....
Salsa dancers in Pacific Palisades, CA - Photographed by Lisa Konczal/Vérité Creative Los Angeles provides a level of diversity like few other places. Home to nearly four million people (L.A. county...
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The Force of Soft Power: Pat O'Connor on 'Private Peaceful'
"You ask me what you want, and I'll either duck, or dodge or tell you the truth," says director Pat O'Connor during a telephone conversation from New York last Tuesday. Because I'm a critic and not a...
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How to Kill a Culture in 3 Easy Steps
Over the past few years I've been filming interviews with random people I've met from the streets of New York, to Prague and from the farms of Eastern Europe to the Midwest and Western United States....
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Hauntology and Psychogeography Inspire New Album From Drew Mulholland of...
Winding through stone corridors down a dungeon-like turret, I placidly follow post-punk musician/academic Drew Mulholland outside into the shocking damp air under the Hogwarts-like maze of a university...
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A Date With the San Francisco Dance Film Festival
Like a World Series hitter, a dance critic today must be prepared not only for the customary fastballs and curveballs, but also the dreaded change-up. Ballet to the People is used to fielding a range...
View ArticleFirst Nighter: Bloody, Bloody London Stages Rule
In all my theater-going days, I don't remember seeing a production that would likely give me nightmares. The thought had never crossed my mind. Until, that is, I went to the Pleasance Company and...
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Ken Burns-On-A-Shoestring: Creating Buzz for Launch of Mini-Doc 'Digging...
"The Joe," the battleship-gray windowless box on the Detroit River, is slated for 2017 demolition, making way for high-rise condos, a hotel and shopping as part of a pay-back to creditors owed $1...
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